


Her Own Decision

by baroque_mongoose



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroque_mongoose/pseuds/baroque_mongoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Service is trying to recruit Harriet Wooster.  Her Uncle Ardsley has something to say about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Own Decision

**Author's Note:**

> All right, it wasn't written for that purpose, but I realise this is probably the nearest you're ever going to get to fanservice from me. Even though I've written Mr Wooster in several states of undress, it always signifies "vulnerable" rather than "sexual", because... well, I'm asexual, so I have a great deal of trouble getting clued into that.
> 
> However, I have recently noticed from various comments that a lot of Mr Wooster's fans tend to go "rawr!" when he's drawn in a dangerous mood. That's not why I wrote this story. I'm now busy supplying Harriet with enough back story for a fully fledged original work, and this is part of it. Still, it occurs to me now that those of you who go "rawr!" at the sight of Dangerous!Wooster are going to be very, very happy with me about this one. He's positively volcanic throughout the story.
> 
> Don't mess with his niece. Or her intended. :-)

“No,” said Sir Ardsley Wooster.

Miss Denby had never seen him like this before. His colouring had always been on the dusky side, but now there was a flush of anger in it and a dangerous glint in his blue-grey eyes. Miss Denby had always privately wondered whether he had quite enough steel in him, given that he had a track record of preferring to think his way out of situations rather than fight; but there was plenty of steel showing now, and she was taken aback. She had not expected to encounter it.

And he hadn't even raised his voice yet.

She thought about threatening to have him recalled, but she knew, and knew that he knew, that threat was empty. The first thing he had done on being sent out as Ambassador was to repair his old friendship with young Baron Wulfenbach, and from that base he had, more or less single-handed, turned the Wulfenbach Empire from a permanent headache into a strong ally. If she had him recalled now, Her Undying Majesty would... well. She would ask questions; and she would, of course, get answers. Miss Denby shuddered. No. Sir Ardsley had put himself well beyond any threats now.

She would have to try to appeal to either his reason, his patriotism, or both. There was no doubt about the strength of either. She sat back in her chair a little, considering her next step.

“What exactly are you so angry about, Sir Ardsley?” she asked, in a more conciliatory tone. “It is, after all, a great honour.” She could think how to proceed next on the basis of his answer. If he had legitimate concerns, there might be a way to address them.

“I'm angry because you know damn well my niece loves and respects me,” he replied, in a measured tone that had smoke escaping from it at the edges. “And that is why you want me to try to recruit her. You think if I do it, she'll rush to join the Service. And she might well do, if I asked her to. That is why I will not.”

“That almost sounds as though you don't want her to join the Service, Sir Ardsley,” said Miss Denby smoothly. “And you know very well what an asset she would be to it.”

“Of course she'd be an asset to it.” There was a flicker of flame under the smoke. “She'd be a better asset to it than I was, and, all things considered, I didn't do so badly, did I? But do you think it would be an asset to her?”

“You did extremely well,” said Miss Denby, rather more hastily than she intended. He had. It was perfectly true. However, he'd also been forced to take the blame for an entire set of chaotic circumstances he could not possibly have stopped, no matter how good he was, and spent more than two years stuck in some godforsaken system of caves with a pack of Jägers as a result. He'd actually _liked_ the Jägers, and he'd never once complained; still, even if he'd found the company congenial, it had been a pretty harsh punishment, and the more so for being undeserved.

That had not been Miss Denby's doing. It had happened before she had been put in charge of his section. Nonetheless, she was embarrassed about it. It shouldn't have happened. He could have defected, or anything.

He was still glaring at her. “Miss Denby,” he said. “I am going to say something to you off the record. Do you understand?” His eyes added, “You had better.”

“Yes, Sir Ardsley,” she replied, with a meekness that surprised even herself. Granted, he was no longer an agent under her supervision; he outranked her now, and by quite a way. Even so, she had never imagined herself being unable to handle him.

“You have, I'm quite sure, been keeping a close eye on Harriet,” he said. “You will, then, have a very good idea of what she is like. As well as being highly intelligent – more so than I am, as I have often said – she is also a basically cheerful and stable person. As I was, before I joined the Service.”

“You are saying you are not now, Sir Ardsley?”

“Sweet lightning!” If Sir Ardsley had had anything in front of him, he looked for a moment as though he could have thrown it at her. There was a pause while he pulled the fragments of his temper together by sheer force of will. “Miss Denby. The first time I ever considered suicide in my life was in Paris. It was moments after I killed Kuchtanin. Had Princess Orlov not been there at the time, there would have been two bodies to clear up and you would have had to find another agent. From that point until very recently, it has been, on average... oh, I should say about once a month. Except, I might add, while I was in the caves. That was, ironically, the best thing that could have been done for me at the time, although I'm very well aware that it was not meant in that way; and, besides, I think six months would have been enough to get me back on a reasonably even keel. After that, I was just bored. So, let's see. That's about ten years altogether if we take out the time in the caves. A hundred and twenty months. A hundred and twenty, give or take maybe ten or so, times when I found myself reaching for the gun under my pillow in the night, thinking what a nice simple solution it would be to everything. Do. You. Understand?”

“But... but you never actually did it,” she stammered.

“No, but if I had, I would have stopped going through all that. I am not going to risk putting Harriet through the same thing. I'd shoot myself right in front of you before I did that.”

“But... not all our agents are suicidal,” said Miss Denby, as gently as she could.

“How the hell do you know?” he exploded. “You never knew I was. Did you?”

“Well, you didn't put it in your reports,” she pointed out, trying to sound like the voice of reason.

“No. My mental state wasn't relevant to anyone except me. Or, if I may put it another way, nobody would have cared.”

“That's harsh, Sir Ardsley,” she said, reprovingly. “Also rather bitter. We do try our best to look after our agents.”

“For as long as it's convenient, yes. Oh, don't look so shocked, Miss Denby. I wasn't looked after. I'm not complaining about that; I didn't ask to be. But I will see you in hell before I recruit my niece.”

“It might have been better if you had said something at the time,” she said.

“Bloody hell, woman!” Miss Denby's eyes widened; she had never heard that sort of language from him before. “Did I not just say I had no complaints on my own account? I was never expecting an easy ride. I got a much harder one than I could possibly have imagined, but I'd made up my mind I was sticking with the Service whatever happened, and that was what I did. If I'd served my country as a soldier instead, and come back with a broken body, I would not be complaining about it. As it is, I served with your people, and I came back with a broken mind. I'm not complaining about that either. You go into combat, you get wounds. They don't always fully heal. Mine haven't. I still get the suicidal feelings; they're just less frequent now, and a great deal easier to resist.” He paused. “And if my niece wants to go into the Service of her own accord, I won't stop her. I'll even help her all I can. But it's got to be her own decision. You will not play on the fact that I'm her favourite uncle to pressure her into it. If you want to try to recruit her, you can send someone else to do it, and that is my final word on the matter.”

Miss Denby looked away. “We've already tried, Sir Ardsley.”

There was a dangerous pause.

“So she said no,” Sir Ardsley stated, flatly.

“Well... yes. She did.”

“And now you've come running to me.”

Miss Denby said nothing. She could not think of anything she could possibly say that would not make things even worse.

“Was that, by any chance, your decision?” Sir Ardsley demanded.

Miss Denby stared at him. Heavens, she thought. I'm frightened of him. I never expected this.

“I... I can't answer that,” she stammered. “Service decisions... you know how it is...”

“I'd have respected you a lot more if you'd just admitted it,” he snapped. “So it was your decision. Get out of my sight.”

“But, Sir Ardsley...”

“Get out, or I shall have you thrown out. And I really don't want to have to say that to you. For the sake of the fact that you used to be my boss, preserve a bit of dignity and walk out on your own two damned poisonous feet.”

Miss Denby got out with all possible haste. Sir Ardsley sat and fumed in his chair for a few moments, then looked round at the heavy velvet curtain behind him.

“All right,” he said. “You can come out now.”

Harriet emerged. “Oh, my,” she said, admiringly. “You certainly gave her a roasting, Uncle.”

“Yes, well, I need a cup of tea after all that. And I apologise for all the swearing.”

“Don't worry about that. I've never seen you so angry.” Harriet paused. “Now I know why you wanted me here. You had a good idea what she was coming to see you about.”

“I did indeed. Miss Denby isn't the type to pay social calls on her former agents, and since you'd already told me someone had tried to talk you into the Service, it was a pretty good guess that she would be coming in the hope of leaning on me. And I wanted you to know about that.”

“Why?” asked Harriet. “I mean, it was certainly an interesting and educational experience, and it's good to know you can work up a magnificent rage when you need one, but... why was it so important for me to know at first hand? After all, as she told you herself, I've already made my decision. There's no way on earth I'm going to join the Service. I'm going to marry Pradhi, and that's hardly compatible with being posted off all over Europa like a parcel.”

Sir Ardsley sighed, and looked at his niece. “Because they'll try again, Harriet. I'm now in a position to look at my old Service files. I wasn't generally aware of it at the time, but they thought I was a first-class agent. And everyone's saying you've got the potential to be better than I was. They really want you. They'll take a lot of trouble to get you.”

“I've said no. Don't they take that for an answer?”

“Not always, no. That's why you need to know exactly what you're dealing with.”

Harriet snorted. “A pack of weasels, if that woman's anything to go by.” She paused. “A hundred and twenty times, Uncle? Really?”

“Well, I didn't actually keep tally. But, yes, that's my best estimate.”

“I knew you'd had problems like that, but...” She shuddered. “That's a lot of really terrible nights.”

He nodded soberly. “Yes.”

“Bloody hell,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Harriet, I'd be a hypocrite of the first water if I told you off for saying that, but I'm interested to know if you've ever said it before.”

“No. And I may not ever say it again, but it seemed appropriate in the circumstances.”

He smiled wryly. “I really can't argue with that. Don't worry, Harriet. Whatever finally removes me from this sphere, I am pretty certain now it won't be my own hand.”

“Good. And don't you worry either, Uncle Ardsley. I'm planning a nice, quiet, straightforward life. Pradhi and I will get married when we graduate, and we're going to live in England, though of course we'll go to India to see his family when we can. The next person who tries to recruit me is liable to be punched firmly on the nose, because if I don't do it, Pradhi certainly will when I tell him all this.”

“If he does, I want a full account,” said Sir Ardsley, with a grin.

“You shall have it.” She put her arms around her uncle's shoulders. “And, I'll tell you what it is; you do remarkably well for walking wounded.”

“I'm not quite as wounded as I was. But thank you.”

And I'm not stupid either, he thought grimly. They know you're going to marry Pradhi. I intend to make absolutely sure you do marry him, as long as that remains what you both want. I know these people, and although I worked for them long enough and did what needed to be done, I also know that they are, as you correctly state, a pack of weasels. Sadly, they were a pack of weasels I had to negotiate in order to serve my country in the specific way I did.

That's why I've got my own weasel in Oxford, and the moment anyone raises a hand against Pradhi, they're going to find themselves up against that weasel. But I'm not going to tell you that, Harriet. You don't need that thought hanging over your head.

She broke into his thoughts. “How ruthless are they?” she asked, seriously.

Given what he had just been thinking about, that question was even more disturbing than it might otherwise have been. “I'm sure you can make a reasonable deduction about that now,” he replied.

“I see. Very.” She looked at him. “Can you do anything to shield Pradhi?”

I might have known, he thought.

“I already am,” he said. “I've got an agent in Oxford. My personal agent. Nobody connected in any way with the Service. Technically he's a private detective, but... well, this is a similar line of work, after all.”

She nodded. “Thanks, Uncle. That must be costing you money. I'll make it up to you when I can.”

“Oh, you needn't. I'm hardly poor, after all.”

“You're a brick. I'll go and get us that cup of tea, shall I?” Without waiting for a reply, she went to the door, but as she opened it, she added almost as an afterthought, “You might like to know I'm learning to fence, by the way.”

“Good. I can help you with that, if you like.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I don't want to fence against you. I couldn't be competitive enough. The only area I like competing with you is brain stuff.”

He grinned. “Yes, because you like to win, and you know I could still fence you into a knot. Don't worry, Harriet. Learn some more technique, and then take me on when you can beat me.”

“It might be a while,” she replied, smiling back. “But, no, seriously. I did mean what I said. You've had so many sharp things pointed at you in your time that I don't think I could bear to do it, even in sport.”

She closed the door behind her. Sir Ardsley stared intently into the void, his face set hard. If they do try anything against your Pradhi, he thought... well, Miss Denby thought I was angry just then. She's seen nothing. _Nothing_. If I have to, I'll pull the whole fermenting dunghill down about their ears and have something halfway decent put in from scratch to replace it.

_I could do that._

I could. But I won't unless they give me no choice. Because if I did that, I'd end up having to run the damn thing, and I'm sick of spying. Quite literally. I've got a job now where they pay me a hell of a lot of money to sit around chatting with my best friend, oh, and do the odd bit of diplomacy here and there, but I can do diplomacy without thinking about it. That comes naturally. And there's Boris, of course, but he's not directly related to my job. We're just good at being useful to each other, and that's no bad thing.

Magnificent rage, she said. Yes. I do seem to be able to do that. The Service had better not make me, then.

It's so easy, when it's for someone else.


End file.
